Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Sophie and Michael's Birth Story

Part I

Today Sophie and Michael are 11 weeks old, smiling and cooing, sleeping longer and longer stretches at night (last night they went 8.5 hours!). Every Wednesday marks another week that I've shared with them, another week since I met my children.

I had just rolled over from one side to the other, a slow maneuver when 37 weeks pregnant with twins, when I felt the warm water, lots of warm water spilling around my hips. I was immediately fully awake, heart beating quickly but otherwise calm, knowing what I needed to do.

Since it was about 6:15 a.m., Mike was in the living room getting ready to go to the gym before work when he heard me.

"Mike?"

"Yeah?"

"My water just broke."

"Seriously?"

He was in the room immediately, looking both stunned and eager. "So, how quickly do we need to move here?"

On my way to the bathroom I told him we needed to get going fairly quickly, but we still had some time before contractions should get started. I also reminded him what the OB told us at the most recent office visit, that I needed to call and have the doctor on-call paged.

From the bathroom I heard Mike wiping up the floor, removing the sheets and mattress pad, and taking them down to the washer, reassuring me once again that I had a real partner in this.

I gave the answering service my cell phone number for the doctor to call me back on. Then I realized I might have over-prepared. In the trunk of my car, in the bag I had packed for the hospital, the bag we had brought along to the last doctor's appointment just in case, was my cell phone charger. My battery was now nearly dead in a very critical moment.

When Dr. Hakim (one of our favorites from the practice) called back, I gave him our home number to call instead so we wouldn't be cut off. Thankfully that all went smoothly, and I explained what happened that morning. I reminded Dr. Hakim that it was twins, that baby B was breech, and that we had a c-section scheduled for the following week. He said to make our way to the hospital, that he would be performing the c-section sometime that morning.

4 comments:

This is so cool. I wish I had wrote more down because I find myself forgetting stuff already. You are such a great writer. I can't wait to hear more.I would love to see the babies and how much they have changed. We'll have to get together soon.